Energy Efficient Lighting and LED

Clever Energy Saving Lighting to Waste less and save more

With energy efficient
lighting there are many important issues. Money and energy saving are
the important and obvious ones. We consider other cost-benefits as well
as resource use to review choices.

Of course,
to consider LED
light as your energy efficient lighting solution, I needed to look at price
versus benefit first. (We are talking reasonable
domestic budgets.) Only then did it make sense including them here.
And besides LED there are a
variety of other
choices how you can go more energy efficient. I will talk about those a little also.

Going Low Voltage

In general, I would give
preference
to low voltage lights - bulbs, ropes, whatever (Those are
the fixtures that do not plug into the main.)

Actually,
wherever you
can - use low voltage with rechargeable batteries instead of high
voltage lights. The best are solar
- rechargeables in this respect.

And I don't mean just those neat garden lights you just stick in the
ground and forget about them. You could also use battery operated
devices. All you need is just a battery
recharger that uses solar energy - dead easy. But...

Just because a light
source is low voltage it does not necessarily translate to
energy efficiency.

For
Downlights, Forget!
the Halogen Variety

Downlights
with halogen bulbs (usually just called dowlights) for
example are certainly NOT
energy efficient. The may look like energy saving devices, but they
are not. In
fact, it is a
popular myth that low voltage halogen downlights save energy. Why not
you ask? Good question, actually.

You see halogens have a
narrow beam. So you need to use a great many of them to
achieve high enough lighting levels. And by that time,
of course, they are no longer
energy efficient.

“Using
better light and less energy is thereal
smart way.

So you could go LED for downlights. Now, Atlas LED
downlights from Lamina are super bright for their size and are
great. But there are even brighter downlight replacements for
both 20W and 30W MR16. (If they are a bit pricey for you then just gowith
dimmable
compact
fluorescents wherever you can - they will also turn the
trick.)

Now
let's look at some numbers...

First of all,
when we consider energy saving, we mostly mean operational energy.
But there is another kind I will touch on next - embodied energy,
which measures the amount of resources
wasted on your light.

Operational ectricity
takes up about 90% of the total cost of lighting.

Lighting
is about 25% (a whopping one quarter) of the all yearly electricity
usage in the U.S. alone.

Scientists estimate that energy efficient lighting could cut the use of
operational electricity by a massive 50%.

Next,
embodied energy means the amount of resources used up and then polluted.

In terms of pollution by power plants like the one that produces
electricity: - They are a major cause of acid rain, smog, and generally
green house gases. By going energy efficient just with your lighting
you could help lowering harmful and polluting green house
emisson.

The
Energy you Save with LED?

With LED lights you use about 80-90%
les power than you do with the incandescent bulb.

In other words you could almost double both the operational and the
embodied energy saving if you traded up your current energy saving
lighting solution to LED light.

Now, consider this the
other way around:

For the same say 15-23W needed for one
compact fluorescent
spiral light, several
LED fixtures could operate day and night
without the need of switching them off. But for the same regular
incandescent bulb - 60
LED fixtures could turn the same trick!

Use just one
less for each of those LED replacement options and you
already save while making way more light. ... Use just half, and you
WILL still save much more!

Smart Ways for
energy efficient lighting

Switching those
inefficient light bulbs off
when you don't need them is a good start.

But there are much better choices.
We mentioned compact fluorescent lights or CFLs before. There is a
growing
variety of them, they have become cheaper and noticeably more reliable.

Next,
I would recommend
LED light bulbs
although not all for all purposes.
That is because despite the hype around all kind of drop-in LED light
bulbs many of them are
mostly good as flood lights and washer lights. There are good
reasons for this including good heat management for led
bulbs.

And
the
most fun-to-use home energy efficient lighting?

Well,
they would probably be rope
LED lights.
You'll find that they are actually available as
both low
voltage and high voltage light fixtures from most good places.
Take a gander at the
many ways LED rope lights
can be used
as various home lighting.

Also, wherever you don't really need ambient room illumination, use
versatile and flexible task lights during the day, but
also at night. Light or motion sensitive night lights will provide
perfect amount of light in hallways, bathrooms and other service areas.

Consider
also the HEAT factor!

This may sound odd, but
beside energy usage the important
thing to also remember is heat.
Wasting energy on
heat when we chose an energy efficient source such as LED is
just not too smart.

Understand this too: incandescents
are one of the worst heat
- and light - polluters.
They only use a small portion of the energy for actual light. Same reason
why incandescents stack up badly with other light sources with respect
to saving
energy. But they don't always fall short. And certainly not
in ALL
respect when you compare them thoroughlywith
fluorescent lights.

Under the Hood

Yes, that's the real
more LED lights. (This is what this site is all about.)

In fact, the future or energy efficient lights and in particular single point intelligent LED lights is just as bright as its present if
not brighter.

Then
there is fiber
optic light that is also energy efficient, extremely exciting
and holds even greater
promise. (What's fiber optic? In those fun color changing lamps with
the many glass strands those strands are actually fiber glass strands
and the color changes are forced by a bunch of LEDs.)

With just one fiber optic light
catcher on your roof you could effectively have natural daylight
anywhere in your home when the sky is not too cloudy.

The only downside is that it
is expensive and
currently used for some pilot office projects only. But fiber optic
lighting WILL be coming to
your home sooner
then you think.

Meanwhile, I
if you want to have some
fun with fiberoptic decoration first hand while -- I have also reviewed some fiber optic Xmas lights.